A Sheep Named Crazy

A late inclusion, just got this from Wazza and it sort of goes with the post I thought.

Aussie ventriloquist.

An Australian ventriloquist visiting New Zealand , walks into a small village and sees a local sitting on his porch patting his dog.

He figures he'll have a little fun, so he says to the Kiwi "G'day, mind if I talk to your dog?"

Villager: "The dog doesn't talk, you stupid Aussie."

Ventriloquist: "Hello dog, how's it going mate?"

Dog: "Doin' alright."

Kiwi: (look of extreme shock)

Ventriloquist: "Is this villager your owner?" (pointing at the villager)

Dog: "Yep"

Ventriloquist: "How does he treat you?"

Dog: "Real good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food
and takes me to the lake once a week to play."

Kiwi: (look of utter disbelief),

Ventriloquist: "Mind if I talk to your horse?"

Kiwi: "Uh, the horse doesn't talk either....I think."

Ventriloquist: "Hey horse, how's it going?"

Horse: "Cool"

Kiwi: (absolutely dumbfounded)

Ventriloquist: "Is this your owner?" (pointing at the villager)

Horse: "Yep"

Ventriloquist: How does he treat you?

Horse: "Pretty good, thanks for asking. He rides me regularly,
brushes me down often and keeps me in the barn to protect me
from the elements."

Kiwi: (total look of amazement)

Ventriloquist: "Mind if I talk to your sheep?"

Kiwi: (in a panic) "The sheep's a liar."

I would like to thank all the well wishers who came to my birthday
party, your kind words were very much appreciated by this old
coprolite.






I just love these simple and very
funny drawings, I have a few more
that I will include with future posts,
these are ALMOST within the
boundaries of my artistic
talents (oxymoron!!)













Continuing with the stories of my past triumphs and tragedies lets move to Maryborough in central Victoria where we farmed for 15 years.

It’s now some 20 years later, different wife… same dumb-ass me,
Julie and I had searched high and low for our “treescape” location, long before the terms seascape and treescape were popular, we found this run down 100 acre farm (read big back yard) that for some reason we both fell in love with.

I have already used the term “run down” to describe our dream home, for that you can read… no fences that were either in the right place or able to contain stock, house and out buildings that were sorely in need of lots of work, now the “dream” included all sorts of self sufficiency stuff and the running of some sheep, little did I know how prophetic the term “running” of sheep was to be.

So it came to pass that for the first 12 months we lived there we worked from daylight to dusk rebuilding all the neglected facets of our dream property and the seemingly never ending erection of fences and installation of gateways.

Finally we had three securely fenced paddocks we were ready to stock our farm, so of we went and bought 150 merino ewes, or as we were soon to find out, 149 merino ewes and 1 devil reincarnate.

This tranquil image is our "Dream" 3 years down the track after a lot of
the work had been done, this was a winters morning after
Jack Frost had paid a visit.

It was onto the bank of this dam the sheep were unloaded.

We had our sheep delivered by truck and as we had no loading ramp, they were off loaded onto the bank of a large dam near the house, “no worries” well that is except the fact that our next door neighbor chose that day, in our absence, to pull down the section of fence behind said dam in preparation to erecting it again the next day, as this was a shared boundary this would normally have been fine.

The problem arose when as the truck departed and we went to put our new sheep into their nice new paddock we found they had scattered everywhere in the neighbors paddock instead through the non existent fence.

Rather than leave them scattered we set about driving them back through the fence and into the pre determined paddock, so we set of after them and after a fair bit of whooping and hollering and lots of running managed to get them all into a mob again and head them in the direction of home.

149 of them dutifully walked through the gap where the fence used to be while the DI who we subsequently named “Crazy” headed of in the opposite direction, working on the basis that 149 out of 150 was pretty good we got them into their new home and went back to clean up the last one.

Pages could be written about the last hour or so of daylight on that eventful day, suffice to say “Crazy” won every round in the fight to get her to rejoin her friends, we finally, through exhaustion, gave in and left her to her lonely existence for the night.

With the dawn of a new day we once more set out to catch Crazy, we were rested and full of fight again… so was Crazy…. after about 3 hours of fast and furious (VERY FURIOUS) endeavor we once more left Crazy to settle down.

Settling down was not one of Crazys strong points however, over the next 3 days we tried unsuccessfully to catch this beast from hell, she finally broke through our neighbors fence onto a laneway that led to the main road, this laneway was fenced of at one end where it led into a state forest so it seemed to offer the perfect chance to catch her.

With Julie and our vehicle forming a barrier I set forth to catch this bloody sheep from hell, I picked up a tree branch some 6 feet long as a means of coaxing Crazy into submission, the plan wasn’t necessarily to thump her with it although that thought had crossed my mind.

As I approached her Crazy made a mad dash for freedom, I raised my branch to deal her the telling blow only to find I was grasping a 2 foot long stub the rest, being rotten, had just snapped off, Crazy easily eluded my stunned effort to stop her.

Not one to be easily out thought by a sheep (notoriously one of the dumbest of all creatures) I devised another plan… we returned home for new equipment…. namely my trusty rifle… when we returned to the laneway I shot the bitch skun and butchered the carcass and declared a victory.

Crazy had other ideas though, stubborn beyond the finish she provided us with meat that was so tough that we were sure we could hear her ba ha ha as we chewed, and chewed, each mouthful.

Our sheep handling skills did improve as time went by especially when
we acquired a motor bike and a sheep dog, there are more stories there
come to think of it.
The mere mention of a sheep dog leads beautifully into another era of
our farming lives.